Simplistically it is “28 Days Later” meets “Condemned: Criminal Origins” meets “Dead Space.” Although none of the infected rush at the camera gleefully screaming “You can be my B*TCH.” (Condemned) There are not any “space monsters” either but the flashlight beams and the first person perspective match beautifully. The film is also very evocative of F.E.A.R. and players of this “first person shooter” survival horror will recognize a number of features from that game.

Suits shoves the viewer into this world of apocalyptic suffering instantly. We “play” as Dr. Lauren Chase (Nichols) at first. The camera takes us though the motions of learning comms, suiting up and what the rules are. All this takes us immediately into the verse and all that is missing is a controller clutched in sweaty hands and the adrenaline rush that these games inspire.

In fact watching Pandemic feels a lot like watching someone else play one of the aforementioned games. A little frustrating yet entertaining. The frustration comes from the “player” not moving quickly enough or endangering the other team members. All that is missing from this experience is a faux “cut scene” where more about the pandemic itself is explained or even a few backstory segments.

The entire movie is structured like a video game. Writer Benson serves up tropes to help us identify each character and includes a twist at the midway point that keeps our interest. All that is missing is the obligatory onscreen scroll of instructions flashing across the helmet faceplate.

Pandemic is not a fast paced film. At just over an hour and a half the action tends to be slow and tense. It is not, amazingly, overly slow. There are points that creep by but when the protagonists reach their objective things swing into high gear and shoot along nicely.

(Warning: To those who play these games on a regular basis, you will find yourself reaching for a game controller. Repeatedly.)

The cast do well in their respective roles. It was brilliant to see Missy Pyle playing as a more serious character in this science fiction type film. Pat Healy makes the most of his small role and Rachel Nichols is pretty darned good as the doctor with a secret.

The mission storyline is that a group of virus survivors have holed up in a school. There are 98 and the uninfected need to be brought back to the compound. Chase is to return to the compound regardless of whether there are survivors or not. She is also to come back if her team are taken out.

Once the team fight their way to the school there is a “Silent Hill” moment where the doctor has a restroom encounter. (The “Silent Hill” franchise always features scary moments in bathrooms (restrooms) in the games regardless of the title.)

The group must fight their way out of the building and try to return to the compound. Meanwhile Dr. Chase has a hidden agenda of her own that does not include returning to safety just yet.

Everything about Pandemic screams video game. After watching it you may have the overpowering urge to fire up the old PS3 (or Xbox) and pop in Condemned; Criminal Origins or F.E.A.R. or even Dead Space. For those who are not devotees of survival horror or even first person shooters (FPS) the film may prove frustrating.

Pandemic is a solid 4 star film. Only a few continuity issues kept the score down as the novelty value alone give the movie a higher rating than usual. Streaming on Netflix at the moment, this is one to watch, if for no other reason than to enjoy the experience. Check out the trailer below:

Last night’s episode of Castle: The Time of Our Lives, was clearly a nod to the old Jimmy Stewart/Frank Capra classic Christmas film It’s a Wonderful Life but it looked like the plot contained a link to the planned Sony PS3 game big screen film of Uncharted. For those that may have forgotten, Naughty Dog, the game company who created the Uncharted franchise, with number four heading for a PS4 near you, announced back in 2011 that the adventures of Nathan “Nate” Drake, Victor “Sully” Sullivan and Elena Fisher would be coming to a cinema in the near future.

Reading the various reviews and thoughts about <em>Edge of Tomorrow</em> apparently only one or two critics have recognised the film for what it is; a video game movie sans video game. Word is that the film is fast paced, entertaining, “original” and looks to be the fun film to see this summer in terms of blockbusters.

Season two of The Walking Dead video game is coming out this year and Telltale Games have released a trailer. Clementine is back and she can be heard over the footage of the video. The award winning game – Game of the Year 2012 from over 90 different review sites, as well as many other accolades – will follow the same format as Season One of the game.

I like Christian Slater. I first saw him in the cult classic 1988 film Heathers where he played teenage burnout and cool-guy flake J.D. and he knocked his performance out of the park.

He’s a more than capable actor who has a voice I’d kill for, yet, his role choices have not always been the best. He was, perhaps, the only good thing about Alone in the Dark (2005) and his very short-lived television series – My Own Worst Enemy – died a quick death.

Directed by Maxim Korostyshevsky (his first film) and filmed in the Ukraine for a budget of an estimated eight million dollars and a fairly impressive cast, Soldiers of Fortune looks like a video game war film.

The cast, as I’ve just mentioned, is pretty impressive, Sean Bean, Ving Rhames, Colm Meaney, James Cromwell, and Dominic Monaghan all do a good job despite the two-dimensional characters they play. Again, as I like all the actors that appear in the film, I find it hard to diss them or their performances; given that their roles weren’t that deep to start with.

The film opens using CoD type graphics with a voice over to describe the events. In a scene straight from a video game’s version of war, a two-man team are infiltrating a suspected Taliban stronghold. While Slater’s character, Captain McCenzie, observes, Captain Reed (Freddy Rodriguez) walks into the camp disguised as a woman.

He gets quickly spotted and taken prisoner. McCenzie decides to get him out, but before he can act a jeep pulls up with CIA man Carter Mason (Meaney) and the whole operation is called off by the “higher-ups.” McCenzie ignores the order and goes in to get his man out.

Walking into the village, he dispatches a slew of bad guys, finds where his guy is being held hostage and after shooting Mason, collects Captain Reed. The next time we see both men, they are civilians and have been dishonorably discharged from the military.

Christian Slater as McCenzie a one man calvary to the rescue.

After this opening scene, we know where this movie is headed. It is not to be taken seriously (at least I hope that was the film makers intention) and if you view it as a bit of very unrealistic fun, you’ll enjoy the film.

You could be forgiven for feeling like the film is a “made-for-television” movie of the week. The stunts aren’t too spectacular, the action not too violent or gory and the props; looked like props. I lost count of the amount of times that the guns being bandied about had plugs in the barrels and were obviously “movie” guns aka replicas.

Playing out like a film version of (fill in game title here) the film almost feels like a third person shooter war game that has opted to lose the players input and just be a video game cut scene, albeit a long cut scene.

Still the action moves quickly and fairly painlessly. It was a fun film to watch and besides the video game aspect, it felt a little like the redheaded stepchild of The Expendables. *And before you start screaming, I mean absolutely no disrespect towards redheaded stepchildren. It’s just an old saying. Okay?)

I’d give the film a 3.5 stars out of 5 only because of the great cast list and, props aside, the film looked stunning with brilliant locations and a cinematography that showed where a lot of the 8 mil went.

FUNFACT: (courtesy of Wikipedia) – When the film was finished it only premiered on 50 screens in the US. Understandably, it did not pull un too much in the area of Box Office returns. In Russia it opened on 500 screens and did a bit better but its overall profit is still under 2 million dollars. It appears to have been fairly popular in the United Arab Emirates as well.